Category: ScienceNews

Today, guest host Selena Simmons-Duffin is exploring a detail very personal to her: How the number of older brothers a person has can influence their sexuality.

Scientific research on sexuality has a dark history, with long-lasting harmful effects on queer communities. Much of the early research has also been debunked over time. But not this "fraternal birth order effect." The fact that a person's likelihood of being gay increases with each older brother has been found all over the world – from Turkey to North America, Brazil, the Netherlands and beyond. Today, Selena gets into all the details: What this effect is, how it's been studied and what it can (and can't) explain about sexuality.


Interested in the science of our closest relatives? Check out more stories in NPR's series on the Science of Siblings.

Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to hear from you.

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Paleontologists have often determined how old a dinosaur was by counting the growth rings in its bones. Just like with trees, it was thought that each ring corresponded to a single year of age. But researchers who studied crocodiles at an outdoor recreation center near Cape Town appear to have poked a hole in that approach. In the crocodiles, which are some of the closest living relatives of dinosaurs, there was more than one growth ring laid down per year. The results contribute to a growing debate over the best way to age animals.

Read more of freelance science reporter Ari Daniel’s story here.

Interested in more on the future of science? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.

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All of us experience consciousness. We have thoughts and feelings, and we're aware of those acting upon us. It's the hidden internal lens through which we view the world, but why do we have this power, and are we the only ones that do? Horizons moderator William Brangham explores this defining aspect of being human with Michael Pollan, author of "A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness." PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

CrowdScience listener Ndanusa in Ghana, is gazing up at the stars, and wondering. Big philosophical questions, like… what keeps our universe in balance?

From our perspective here on earth, the universe seems like a vast, harmonious system, perpetuating eternally without change. But Ndanusa knows a thing or two about the stars, and he knows that they use up hydrogen as they burn, and release helium. And he’s wondering, is there something out there which does the opposite? Something that uses up helium, and produces hydrogen, to keep the universe in perfect, chemical equilibrium?

His question makes sense! Here on earth for example, animals use up oxygen and produce carbon dioxide, and plants do the opposite. A perfect cycle of production and consumption which (at least in theory), keeps our planet in perfect balance. Could the same kind of system be in place in the wider expanse of the universe?

His intriguing question leads presenter Alex Lathbridge on a journey into the blackness of deep space, the ancient origins of our universe, and the complex physics of the stars. He pops into the Ghana Radio Astronomy Observatory, just outside Accra, where astrophysicist Dr Proven Adzri helps him peer into the earliest few seconds of our universe, and find out what set the stars burning. And at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Dr Linus Labik talks him through what’s going on at the atomic level. And in the deep blackness of the night, up above the tree canopy of Kakum National Park, he takes a peek at the stars for himself. Local guides Chris and Kwabena explain how much meaning there is behind the stars in the night sky.

Presenter: Alex Lathbridge

Producer: Emily Knight

Editor: Ben Motley

(Photo: Large orange and purple exploding orb - stock photo Credit: Soubrette via Getty Images)

The Hindu festival of Holi has the Unexpected Elements team delving into the science of colour. First up, forget chicken and egg, we bring you a whole new controversy of which came first: colour or colour vision? Then, we learn how a new development in infrared contact lenses could extend our range of vision and help people with colour blindness.

We’re then joined by marine biologist Roger Hanlon who explains how octopuses are great at changing tones, even though they can’t appreciate the colours that they make. Plus, what’s orange, cream, 5,000 years old and worryingly resistant to most of our common antibiotics? And why does reading on dark mode leave one listener seeing things? All on this week’s Unexpected Elements.

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton, with Andrada Fiscutean and Chhavi Sachdev Producers: Imy Harper, with Ella Hubber and Lucy Davies

Teens aren’t getting enough sleep! And a two-decade study suggests it’s getting worse. Scientists found that the number of high schoolers getting insufficient sleep — less than seven hours a night — has increased from 69% to 77%. The throughline? There wasn’t one. Teens had bad sleep habits across most demographics, including race, gender and grade level. The findings were published this week in the journal JAMA.

Interested in more science behind recent headlines? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.

For more about earthquake science – and the Cascadia Fault in particular – check out our recent episode on the Pacific Northwest’s Big One.

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In his role as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is changing how the United States approaches vaccines. But those changes aren’t limited to the United States. NPR global health correspondent Gabrielle Emanuel joins Short Wave to talk about two examples of how the global public health landscape may be shifting. First, the United States’ ultimatum to an international vaccine group. Second, the uncertain fate of a vaccine trial. Some researchers are calling the trial a “unique” opportunity, and others are calling it “unethical.” 


Read more of global health correspondent Gabrielle Emanuel’s work here.


Interested in more global health? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.


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Pioneering digital forensic expert Hany Farid talks with Amna Nawaz about the dangers of artificial intelligence being deployed irresponsibly, why social media companies prioritize engagement over authenticity and how to sift through what's real and what's not. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

If you’ve been on the internet in the past few weeks, chances are you’ve seen him: a tiny gray-brown monkey dragging a big, stuffed orangutan around Japan’s Ichikawa Zoo. His name? Punch-kun, or Punch for short. His story? Early abandonment by his mother, careful treatment from local zookeepers and instant social media fame. But are all the (human) primates jumping to Punch’s defense justified? And what’s normal for Japanese macaque society, anyway? To find out, NPR’s Katia Riddle chats with psychology professor and animal expert Lauren Robinson.

Interested in more animal science? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.

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There is a value to shared knowledge that tends to go unrecognized because it's so ubiquitous. Nonetheless, experimental psychologist Steven Pinker explains in this Social Science Bites podcast, common knowledge underlies things like paper money, governance, and even coral reefs.

And common knowledge, he makes clear to host David Edmonds, "does not have its ordinary sense of conventional wisdom or an open secret or something that everyone knows, but rather something that everyone knows that everyone knows, and everyone knows that, and everyone knows that, and so on, ad infinitum."

Possing that shared knowledge – and the knowledge that others share that knowledge – creates the conditions for coordination, and thus action beyond what an individual could achieve. That's the reason, he says, "that autocrats fear common knowledge of the regime's shortcomings is that no regime has the firepower to intimidate every last citizen."

Pinker, the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, details his understanding of the virtues and vices of common knowledge in his most recent book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life. The book, his 13th, continues his streak as one of the most publicly recognized of public intellectuals, including recognition as one of Foreign Policy's "World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals" and Time's "100 Most Influential People in the World Today." He is also only the second (so far) returning guest to Social Science Bites, having addressed violence and human nature in a 2012 podcast.